Tree Lives Matter: A systematic study on the impact of long term quarantine on human intelligence

29 min readAug 29, 2020

A satirical investigation jointly authored by: Fathun Karim & Taif Bin Ahmed Anim

Abstract

Even amidst the global pandemic protests seem to be in the air . The death of George Floyd has sparked massive outrage and rioting in the United States but today we will not be looking at that, we will be looking at a protest that is much closer to our beloved soil. The protesters in the US resurrected the Black Lives Matter movement once again in the light of recent police brutality and here in our country we too are not willing to be left behind. But racism was never an issue for our country, in fact being racist was considered to be healthy and normal, so a Black Lives Matter would only generate confusing stares from the masses, so a local approach had to be taken. Upon knowing this, the CEO of outrage got into immediate action and ordered his employees to bring back an issue from the past; A protest which died years ago but rose once again from the ashes like a phoenix . Yes, if you are already guessing you would be guessing right, we are talking about the Metro Rail protest .The protest began in 2016 but took a backseat after other issues were brought up . But the Academy of TSC went into a hiatus after the scholars of TSC got tempted into tons of other side projects and also in the starvation Olympics. But with the quarantine happening and lack of recreational chemicals all over the academy, the ghost of the past came back to haunt once again. In this article we hope to dive into the world of the TSC Scholars and analyze the dynamics of the resurrected movement as a whole.

Introduction

First of all, The Trees: If you have mistakenly wandered off to the heart of the Oxford of east uncommonly known as Dhaka University, you probably visited this legendary area named TSC. Apparently this place is supposed to be Teachers’ and Students’ Center but there are hardly ever any teachers seen in this place. This place is most suited for probably enjoying some time with someone you are surely going to dump in the next month and to purchase herbal remedies and pharmaceutical items. The most common thing to see here is probably humans wearing huge sniper targets on their head. If our reports were correct most of these humans were female. Anyways, if you can divert your attention from all the great sources of interesting human behavior around then you will get to notice there are so many trees in the proximity. These are not just great but most of these trees are old too. The trees mark the age old saga happening around DU all over the year. They are the witness of decades of chaos, riots and friendly fights among the wide variant of scholarly groups of the TSC Academia. If the trees are indeed chopped off, the essence of all these commotions, the monuments of the valiant/scholarly spirits will be uprooted along with the physical trees themselves.

At this point, you may be wondering why we are bringing up trees and what’s the point of writing this. Don’t get us wrong we love our stationary chlorophyll containing friends. After all, it may be beyond the comprehension of our general readers, but from the findings from the last TSC Proceedings, we came to learn that trees produce Di Oxygen Mono Nothing. It was a remarkable discovery indeed which is yet to cross the border and illuminate the west, but the news has already broken out among the local peers. Another vital study from the proceedings found out that trees can assist with sanitary facilities. Human urine and feces are filled with the vital nutrients for trees. The trees at TSC have therefore evolved to attract humans to pee and defecate on them, which in turn also benefits the human, how you may ask. Well, again a group of TSC scholars dived into the issue and found out that holding your urine may cause bladder damage, urinary tract infection and also can lead to kidney stone formation.

After the proceeding was published the TSC servers were reported to be overflowed with traffic. The people were illuminated, especially the local scientific peers. Multiple counts of people hugging and cuddling trees at TSC for hours long were spotted and reported in the national dailies. Many were reported to have performed some novel physical rituals with the trees. The Academy have categorized these new specimens as “ Homo Sheikhmujibi Ecosexualis”. But recent development at metro rail has put the novel species under threat of extinction due to their shrinking habitats. The over aware local crowds and scholars therefore came forward to protest the cutting down of trees and preserving the local ecosystem of the TSC area. Thus the last issue of the TSC proceedings helped in shaping public awareness, and instigated a massive movement against the metro rail project of the government

The Scholarly Commandments

After months of surveys, a research team accumulated the most prominent arguments against the project and published the data in TSC Open Access. Analyzing the sentiments we find out the reasons for protests as such:

The trees!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Sound Pollution from the Metro Rail.

3. Vibrations

4. Massive crowding.

7. Overflowing DMC patients

8. Indifference to alternate route selection/station selection

9. Damage to cultural heritage.

10. No other uni in any part of the world would have allowed such a structure to go above them.

11. The Air Force didn’t allow a route near their borders, why should DU?

12. Invasive gang weeder species which may pose a threat to the local ecosystem.

13. Price hike of cancer curing medicines, due to escalated demand.

14. Less public coochies.

For the points number 12,13 and 14 we can share nothing but sympathies for our notable scholars. This touches us all, and if you fail to feel any empathy, please reconsider your humanity.

For the rest of the points though, let’s take a deep dive into the issues presented by our notable scholars and check the amount of veggies required to produce such ephemeral wisdom.

Note: Most of the issues raised here are addressed by using the official reports.If further info is required contact NKDM ,who conducted the EIA surveys .

Point Number 1:

Though how bad of a news it may strike to the heart of Team Greta, to our notable scholars of TSC, and also lets not forget the local birds, chopping trees might prove to be necessary for a project to be completed. If a tree gets into the way of a construction site, it’s quite normal to get rid of it. During road construction, building construction, railway constructions even, trees need to be cleared. If you want to create a civil construction, you have to sacrifice some trees that come in the way. We cannot expect to preserve the amazon while willing to create a Manhattan within its perimeter. Unless we can go to a cyberpunk future, with elevated skyscrapers and elevated roadways, which can leave the rain forests stay at their place underneath in peace. We do not Know if that could be turned into a reality, since the trees would die out anyway due to low sunlight but hey who am I to presume the course of science.

But since we are not living in such a Utopian commune, we are required to come to terms with the basic facts of civil construction, that it requires some trees in the construction site to be sacrificed. But the annoying thing is that our scholars are very choosy when picking up the trees to fight for. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA Report) of the project has already mentioned the number of trees to be cut in total, along with every minute detail of all of them. The categorizations have been done too. Every tree was analyzed, categorized and presented in the report along with their size, location in the Right of Way, scientific name, local name, common name, types (if they are fruit yielding, timber yielding, ornamental, medicinal or other) etc. The owners of the trees are also noted, who are PWD, DCC and The parliament house. Here is a quick summary on the number of trees, collected from the “RESETTLEMENT ACTION PLAN-II (RAP-II) FOR MRT LINE-6 EXCEPT DEPOT AREA” report.

For further intricate details on the trees, you can check the original survey from the EIA reports which lays out all the information in a a far detailed way. A glimpse of the descriptive survey is hereby presented,

We are mentioning all this just to prove the point that the project officials have done their homework and assessed all possible impacts on the vegetation to carry out the gigantic project. These fall under unavoidable losses of the whole project. Not just the trees, the company NKDM had assessed flora and fauna populations both, which may be hampered due to the project. The birds, the aquatic animals, the amphibians, and ecosystem as a whole. They did not find the metro project to be conflicting or disrupting any protected ecological place, plant or animal species or others. Most bird populations that might get affected, are expected to migrate into nearby vegetation sites. Mitigation to ecological damage also has been proposed in the report, which includes re-plantation near the project sites. The trees that would suit best for re-plantation purpose have also been researched and cataloged.

A lot of work went towards assessing the damage and probable mitigating measles for them. Developing a sustainable project model is a vital aspect for a project and for the Metro Rail Project it had already been done years and years ago. But our scholars haven’t done their homework, so we can’t blame them well enough. For once, they don’t know anything about unavoidable ecological losses in a mega-project, neither do they know about the mitigating measures which are proposed for damage control. But somehow, in the mind of our scholars, trimming the handful of trees that are hanging over the project site is more destructive than opposing a billion dollar mega-project which would serve a wider purpose for the millions of city dwellers.

In fact, the alternate routes that have been pondered by the project officials include even much more trees, vegetation which are also protected under the environmental act of Bangladesh. One of the driving factors for not choosing the alternative was the ecological consequences that might have followed. So are our notable scholars pro-environment or actually anti-environment? We can bet that they don’t know any of the consequences of their demand as well. Or maybe they are just acting in self interest. So why should the government care about the interest of fringe people over the interest of the nation as a whole? The alternate route and it’s probable consequences can also be found in the EIA report.

So we can safely assume that the weed is strong on this one.

Moving on — → Noise:

This could be a legit concern because a non interrupting environment is indeed needed for a sound educational atmosphere. But, to the dismay of our fellow scholars, the EIA report already has worked that out too. The report extensively highlights the problems that might be associated with the noise generating from site construction to railway operation. It includes the models followed to determine noise levels and the necessary mathematics to quantify the problem as a whole. It also proposes mitigation plans to sort out the problems that may arise. The team first took the ambient noise measurements of the areas. Then they proceeded towards calculating the probable noise generation due to operation. They compared it to the ambient noise and the standard ambient noise. If they didn’t match, they moved towards mitigatory measures. As DoE didn’t have the detail particulars, the company adopted MoE, which is the Japanese standard for noise regulations in railway operations. Now the funny thing is, the MoE indicates that the equivalent continuous sound pressure level should be around 60 dB during day time and 55 during night time. But the existing noise levels near Bangla Academy, which is 78 dB at daytime and 68 at night time already surpasses the standard condition to a considerable amount. We assume, thats something our scholars are unaware of since we never saw them go on mass processions to keep the noise level in check before like we are doing now. But to give them a benefit let’s assume that the metro rail will cause the noise level to rise astronomically high. But then again, such an assumption falls to the ground once the report is gone through. The calculations to predict the noise level clearly indicates that the additional noise contribution from the metro to the surroundings would not be significant. The Du region would see 0.5% increase in peak ambience conditions near public library and TSC areas. The reason for considering peak increase in ambience is to imagine the worst case scenario, at times when activity is the most and the ambience remains at highest value(7 am to 7 pm). Now the 0.5% to the already existing noise level isn’t something to make such a huge fuss about, otherwise, we would have seen larger protests regarding the existing problem before. Now to add to the inconvenience of our respectable researchers, the company had laid out plans to even curb out the noise impact that might follow the rail operation. Here’s a flowchart taken from the report,

If you take a further read on the report you can find more mathematical and statistical detail upon which they draw their conclusions from. Jumping into section 5 you will see a brief picture of the ambient noise scenario, and in section 6 a detailed picture of combined noise prediction through metro operation and construction operation. Now we encourage our readers to look up to the report, so we won’t be going through the details, but just the highlights.

On another interesting note, our fellow researchers held an online meeting on 7th June, from their journal’s official Facebook page. One of the academics pointed out that in the proximity of 20 meter radius of the railway track lie the most prolific research labs of DU, coming up with scientific breakthroughs now and then. From her perspective, being in a 20 meter radius made it very dangerous for the labs to operate so productively as it is doing now and implying that a lab renovation would not be possible, since it wasn’t constructed keeping renovations in mind. But she threw a boomerang at the project if you check closely which is only to hit her back. The MoE standards lay out the safe distance from the rail tract to noise receptors at a 12.5 meter distance. So when our honorable academic argued that 20 meters is an alarming distance she is either discarding engineering standards or she is just ignorant. But as a rule of thumb we know TSC Scholars can never be ignorant, so we are assuming that a groundbreaking engineering discovery awaits us all, which would destroy all traditional engineering standards like a tropical cyclone.

Then the report also provides compensating propositions. The principle mitigation measure includes the usage of Vibration proof track (MSS cushions) and noise barriers. A total of 5868 meters of MSS is to be installed among which Dhaka University will get its fair share, as per the report. For further noise reduction, noise barriers are to be provided alongside the entire alignment. The report indicates a total of 138 meters of parapet noise barrier of 1.5 height to be installed at the university area. The measures are taken as per the industrial standards along with some extra steps for further remedial purposes.

So, let’s analyze, The weed here is quite cheap which is deteriorating our scholar’s reading comprehensibility.

Moving on — → Vibration:

Again the report intensively studies this problem. The logic was that vibrations arising from the transit operations would meddle with the scientific research and can cause property damage. Let’s analyze this claim.

The transit operations are supposed to have significant vibrational problems compared to viaduct construction. So keeping this in mind, the report further progresses to quantify the impact and to address it in full. The Japanese method established by TOEI has been adopted to study the vibrational phenomena that might be incorporated with transit operations. Among all the country standards, the Japanese standard for vibration regulation is taken into account to act as the standardization index for designing the routes of the railway track. The reasoning behind it is that the Japanese criteria is the most strict than any other, and the company is trying to design the routes according to the strictest measures as possible, to keep the plan out of any probable loophole. The Japanese criteria even comes in two categories, among which the even more stricter one is taken into account which is 60 VdB or in other words, approximately 1.4 mm/sec of peak particle velocity.

The curvatures create the larger vibrations, hence 200m curves, and 400m curves were separately studied and appropriate measures have been suggested with respect to the VdB levels that would be accompanied. The critical distance of 12.5 m was taken into consideration as per the Japanese standard. And it was found that not a significant increase in VdB would be observed than the standard one. In the pier face, it was found to be a little bit exceeding but let’s face it, there is no structure which lie in the pier face. In fact most of the structures are situated beyond the standard distance that is 12.5 meter, lying in around 20m or 30m at distance. The VdB already meets the standard, which is 57.5 for ballast less track, 49.9 for Vibration proof track in case of 200m radius; 60.8 VdB for ballast less and 53.2 for vibration proof track in case of 400m radius; 59.4 VdB for ballast less and 51.8 VdB for vibration proof track. Now as we see, the strictest standards are met, in terms of vibration for 12.5 distance from the piers. But, on the brighter side, not a single structure in the university area lies within such a little distance, the closest one was Dhaka Gate which lies at 14.5m distance, but still that crosses the standard threshold. The rest lie at 24 to 55m distance which far exceeds the standard one. So we can easily assume the vibration won’t affect our scholars’ privacy at any cost. In fact Dhaka Gate was treated as a special case, and to protect it’s fragile structure, the piers have been modified to be installed at no less than 15m of distance and also the plan includes Vibration proof (MSS cushion) tract to further decrease the VdB below the standard VdB level.

Now, the engineers and planners have done their homework, but our scholars were too busy in discovering scientific breakthroughs in their pollution free labs, and getting pissed at the thought of metro rail demolishing down their research environment through vibration (Just Like our former minister, who accused the opposition party to have demolished Rana Plaza by shaking and vibrating the structure). They were so busy with scientific concerns and the bleak future that they forgot to take a look at what they were raising questions about. It’s understandable, doing science and experiments really takes a toll on now, something planners and engineers have never done and therefore, would never understand. Our utmost sympathies!!!

The weed here is diagnosed to be cheap too. It is having similar adverse effects like it did in case of noise.

Moving on — → Overcrowding.

Now, the university area never ran out of crowds. TSC is one of the most crowded places of Dhaka University. Almost all the roads are open to public usage, except for heavy vehicles like buses and trucks. But the scholars have decided that any existing crowding condition can be tolerated, considered a part of DU heritage, but additional crowds due to metro operations can in no way be tolerated. The logic behind this is diverse. Firstly, the crowd would spoil the beautiful ambient environment of DU. Then there would be many non local crowds who would only come looking for trouble, harass the students, rob them in streets, tease the girls in public and practice all sorts of criminal behavior alike. Also, littering would increase. Another crowd that the students raised their concerns are on the hawkers and cart vendors. Now DU already has a good share of its hawkers and cart businesses in it’s roadsides and recreational zones. And it is not seen as too big of a deal. And a station wouldn’t bring a wave of hundreds of new hawkers and cart sellers in that area because of the already existing market conditions. Sneaking in and thriving into an already existing market is quite a tough challenge unless adequate business scopes are present. The existing cart vendors could grab the market due to leisure spending of the students and consequentially, a demand on their take away products. But the transit users are commuters. They would be on the move, and won’t intuitively spend an hour or a half for recreational purposes in the campus area. The place where the vendors can actually have a chance with the commuters is where they would gather up, that is on the station platform where they would wait a few times for the train to arrive. But the stations are elevated and are far above the ground. So how can it pose threat to the streets, like turning the footpaths into mini markets? Therefore, the commuters vs vendors scenario at the campus roads is actually debatable. Or else we would have observed overcrowded itinerant vendors in all public stoppages. Markets can’t just grow out of the blue unless a favourable condition exists. Also, upon request adequate traffic policing can repel the sellers out of the station platform. So, controlling this part of the problem is actually a solvable administrative problem. Also most of the students who would use the station would be DU students. So technically ‘extra’ people should not astronomically concern anyone. In the report, it does assert that some pedestrians may increase in the station proximities. But the study did not find the project to fail to accommodate them. Also plans to renovate the streets, footpaths have been submitted to DMTC for better pedestrian management. But considering the fact that no student wing went into massive protests to dispel out the temporary businesses at TSC and nearby areas especially, and also in other DU corners speaks volume and indicates how artificial of an outrage it is.

Then another concern raised was that the extra “crowds” would be aggressors. They would sexually harass the female students of DU and rob the innocent children on the streets. Now this is a really far fetched tin foil hat claim. It assumes that commuters are usually robbers, hijackers and sexual aggressors. But in the end, the students themselves are commuters too. Would they like to share the tag of aggressors as well? And also, why would aggressors and snatchers need to travel so long from their locality to the campus area to safely practice their criminal activities. It just doesn’t make any sense. If it really was the case, then they wouldn’t require metro rail to do that. The commutation options are already open for everyone through the campus. Therefore, how metro rail can play such a big magic in commuting new waves of robbers and aggressors whereas ground commutation can’t is open to scholarly debate.

Moving on — -> Overflowing DMC Patients.

Though we used this here satirically, based on the concern raised by one of our fellow correspondents. But this is actually something which even further solidifies the ground of the metro project. Transporting patients needs to be fast and immediate. Or people can die. So, a country’s government can’t just prioritize the sentiment of salty university students over the average citizen’s health condition, can they?

Moving on — → Alternate routes:

Hate to break it to you pal, but this has been assessed far before the scholars even raised their concerns. It’s not like the company gets paid for nothing. They did “No Build “surveys, tested alternative routings economically, socially, environmentally and technically. The optimum design that was selected is what our scholars are bitching about at the present. Now changing the route would have brought more inconvenience to the project. The optimization cannot be achieved in other routes. Now if some of our radical scholars say that “down with metro rail”, which one of them actually did in one of the journal’s forums, that would be pointless as well. Because, a “No build” alternative has been assessed too. It was found out that the traffic speed would decrease on average 2.8 km/hr by the year 2025. But with the metro project up and running, the average speed would rise up to 7.6 km/hr. Also the traffic demand forecast indicates that the traffic would increase 3 times in the metropolitan with respect to 2009 when the survey was conducted. This requires a strategic structure to manage. Therefore the “No Build” alternative was counted out. Click to navigate to the source.

Now for alternate routes, the study found out that it would have required depot installation in the city park area. This would have led to a great irreparable damage to Shishu Park. The park area would be drastically reduced and a great deal of trees would be needed to chop down. Now, Shishu Park is a national concern unlike DU, where the students themselves are divided. So, damaging a nationally protected children’s recreational center which has been around for ages, could generate national contempt. Also technically this was a poor choice, since the usable land area for the depot installation at the Shishu Park is very little compared to Suhrawardy Udyan where it is located now.

Just like rousting which are selected on the basis on traffic demography and technical, economical, environmental optimization, station locations are selected on the optimization scale too. Station locations are based on focal city activities, traffic nodes, physical conditions (elevated road, geology, groundwater, etc.), accessibility protection from flooding and escape in an emergency. Source

Also, minimizing traffic congestion is another concern. Putting a station in a heavily busy Shahbag intersection could cause traffic disruption below the tracts due to increased pedestrian movements. The alternative could be to push some steps forward within the technical limit, which it did, to the next traffic node, that is TSC arena. There could be a good lot of other reasons too, which the planners would know better. But the consultancy firm from which our scholars collect their data and gather their spirits from are from the humanities department of different local universities. Never were they seen to interview or discuss the issues with the planners and engineers who were the brain behind all of these. But we understand their sentiment, you gotta be aware of your peers. How can the east’s oxford grads pay heed to stupid engineers who couldn’t even fight and win their chance to study at DU. Plebs shouldn’t be paid attention to in any way.

So, bottom line, don’t ask for the boof from the wrong group of people. Know thy commie peers!!!

Moving on — →Heritage destruction:

She also went on highlighting the fact that DU is a living museum of our country’s liberation and therefore, a very important cultural heritage whose landscape is illegal to alter. While it is true that some of the structures are officially protected as cultural heritage sites, it’s equally true that the project is imposing no threat to them. As per the law, (on par to the UNESCO standard) rural or suburban heritage should have 0.5 miles radius free from any structure or construction. But, for metropolitan areas, the rule is to keep the buffer zone free from any construction which is at least 3 meters in width from the structure in consideration. Now our honorable scholar mentions the buffer zone to be 200 square meters which is outright wrong. Her data is low with respect to suburban heritage structure, and too big for urban heritage structures. You can fact check the data by clicking on this link (para 3.4.6.4). For the hundred heritage sites that are protected you can follow up daily star’s article on this and check if actually any of the heritage sites fall under the 3 meter buffer zone. It doesn’t. The report exclusively states the fact that upon surveying, the current route was found not to lie in conflict with any historical heritage sites of Dhaka and was completely clean on that.

Moving on — -> Comparison to foreign universities.

There are lots of universities which have metro operations around them. And also if there is no instance of any university hampering development works for national cause if the necessary guidelines are followed. As, the project report clearly specifies that all the guidelines are maintained and well satisfied, then on what basis can the opposition come from. In no way any well reputed foreign university would be so dumb to fight that, but even if they did they would be wrong and legally lose.

Moving on — — → The case surrounding Air Force

Most of our honourable scholars are pretty mad over the fact that the government does not treat them and the military equally. In this century of globalisation, where celebrities like John lenon advocated for a “no border, no countries” sentiment, what is the use of militaries? Militaries bring forth war, violence and million dollar budget war films. But our notable scholars ask for peace and prosperity. Clearly both are not on the same level. So, if the Military gets one tenth of a pie, the rest portion of course mathematically should go to DU.

But our government is turning their back on DU grads. As one scholar put out, the air chief had pressured the PM and administrative authorities of metro rail to change the route of the metro project despite the former plan being more convenient than the current one, the changed one. So, if the government acknowledged the troubling request of the Air Force, why can’t they listen to the sensible request of the university students! The reasoning of our scholar was that the route was chosen to satisfy the needs of political leaders. So that they can conveniently gather in suhrawardy udyan for their political assemblies. They would be needing to park their cars comfortably in Shishu Park Arena, and also travel from Uttara to Shahbag via metro. Also they need their children to play in Shishu Park while they are attending the political assemblies in Suhrawardy Udyan. Our honourable scholar termed this political selfishness as “DSS” or “Digital Singapore Syndrome”. And due to DSS, the route had to be reconstructed to the current one, although the current one is far more inconvenient.

But the DSS Theory also doesn’t hold any coherence as our reporters have found out. The problem with this theory starts with the Air Force. No matter how much pissed off our scholars may be for not receiving the same privilege as of the militaries, but the journal of commonsense states that, highly experienced military administratives would be far more knowledgeable on military affairs than a young adolescent angry university student. Or else there would be no barriers between a university fresher with an age old experienced air force official with regards to aircraft handling, flight operations, VIP, VVIP transportation, relief transportation operations etc. It is true that the route had to be changed, but the necessity of the change as outlined by the Air Force Staff were more than just an angry kid being mindlessly stubborn for more candies.

As the officials have pointed out, the chief obstruction of this project is purely technical. As per the Civil Aviation Act the height of the metro rail structure doesn’t satisfy the allowable standard. The allowable height of any structure on that distance from the funnel runway is 14 feet as per the CAR-84 regulatory measurement. But the MRT Line-6 was to be 62 feet high which is more than 4 times the allowable height. It would shrink the runaway to an alarming extent which may intrude the flight operations. Also it posed a wall obstruction for which the flight would be left with no room for lateral maneuver and also it would require the flights to change the approach angle to 8 degrees than the usual 2.5–3 degrees which would pose risks to landings and takeoffs. Now the place harbors around 10000 flight hours by BAF alone, apart from the VIP, VVIP, relief and emergency goods transportation which increases the flight hours even further up. It’s no wonder the military officials wouldn’t want more damage to their carriers or damage to their pilots, passengers and goods. If you want to view the full press briefing of the justification from the Air Force Staff regarding the issue, follow this link.

Now for the rest of the part of our scholar’s arguments, which is concerning the engineering design, is utterly laughable. She only takes into account one aspect, the” radius” of the track to justify her claims, but sadly civil engineering isn’t that easy. There are tons of engineering and non-engineering considerations that are needed to be taken before adopting a route. Some of the non engineering considerations have been discussed on the EIA report in the alternate route considerations. A screenshot on why it is not recommended have been provided at section 8. But that’s just the EIA assessment. There are tons of other engineering assessments which dictated the map of the route alignment. Speaking of maps, have a look at these two pictures. This is to show the contrast of civil constructional plans done by a biochem fresher in parallel with professional engineering firms.

Figure: Railway engineering as done by a biochem fresher(Left) , Figure: Railway engineering as done by professional engineers(right)

It is also fun to see the 200m radius argument since it appears to be her comparing one part to a distant part of the route. These are not alternate options. The reason the Khamarbari route was selected is because the alternative Bijoy Sharani plan was rejected by the air force on technical grounds. The reason Matsha Bhaban is not selected since it did not meet the technical design evaluations and EIA assessments, compared to the route through the university area. Also another fun fact is that the curvatures are all around 200m in radius in the farmgate area, which absolves it of any risk, but our fellow scholars are sure that this track doesn’t meet the criteria and is very much risky. Also they are stating that the Matsha Bhaban radius is far more flexible. Now this is doubtful, because all their surveys were done in Google Map satellite view and not through any due process or survey reports.

Now to learn which factors actually affect design plans, resort to Transportation engineering to start understanding what level of intricacies goes in designing a highway or railways. Navigate through the sources and you would understand why just a google map and a digital marker isn’t enough to derive a solid railway route design.

But another thing should be kept in mind that, adjustments can be made of course. But the trade-offs should be kept in mind. If viable, better alternate routes are present they should be adopted without a doubt. The economic, environmental, technological trade offs of course would have to be far low for the Matsha bhaban route, that it had to be discarded by the metro authorities. To understand the inconveniences one does not simply ask “The political leaders”, but the “Planners and Engineers” of the company.

Results and Discussion:

The project follows all the necessary technical and environmental guidelines and is clean on all accounts. There would be some subtle damages, inconveniences and disruptions while constructing the whole thing which is perfectly reasonable for a mega-project like this, but the trade off outweighs the problems once it goes operational. It was found that our scholars at the TSC corners preferred “emotional” method, instead of any pragmatic methods. They also rely on vegetation more than technical reports to dictate their decisions. If they took a slight attempt to read, they would have seen that all of the concerns have been addressed and there is no substantial grounds to fight on. Searching for cheap loopholes would now only mean fighting for fighting’s sake, which would end up in nothing but an utter waste of time for all.

If our scholars walked down the streets with an open eye for the last few years they would have observed the progress in the constructional works. The depot has been installed, the soils have been prepared, the pillars have been erected, viaducts are being formed etc. The bottom line of which is that millions of dollars of investments have already been channeled towards its progress, which includes the survey, planning, manufacture, installation apart from some other costs.

Now just to protect the fragile baseless sentiments of some absolutely uniformed student group, should the government sacrifice millions of dollars of taxpayer money and adopt inconvenient planning and technical design. Should the government serve national interest or the sentiment of just a handful of students?

On an interesting note: The Managing Director of the Metro Project is a DU graduate. Feels funny to see an alumni going against their own doesn’t it? Or may it be that he isn’t? Maybe he is just doing his job as it should be done instead of purposefully trying to destroy his own alma mater? Has this idea ever come across our notable scholars’ mind? That’s a question we are leaving to God to figure out.

Our proposition would be for our scholars, to learn how to read. There are tons of reports publicly available. Many are kept confidential for legal reasons. But you can request access to those. Also if reading doesn’t help, or if you are heavily against reading, you can always reach out to the engineering and consultancy firms that are dealing with this. Stop taking commie bhai brothers as a valid source of information.

Reference

In this section we present the data that was used to formulate our theories .The Scholars of TSC and the dominant species of the land of Shahbag is highly territorial as seen with the pictures below :

Fortunately, for our reporters their underdeveloped neocortex makes them susceptible to camouflage . Our reporters were able to bypass their measures and observe them in their natural habitat .

The most common thing we observed was their immense love of trees. That is showcased below:

Outsiders causing problems is also one of the fears of the native species.

This fear is so prevailing that the scholars are comparing the outsiders to a certain political party and of course most commuters are molesters !!

Moving away from the obviously retarded comparison .There’s also the culture and poribesh . TSC is the Silicon Valley of culture and a true architectural marvel and such projects would destroy the beauty .

The movement has also attracted commies and people harboring commie ideas who want to stop the project through more revolutionary means . They have a more simpler plan than the other scholars , if the protest does not work they will just smash the pillars .To that we tip our fedoras and hope their affairs are in order .

Another group is what we have classified as the clout chasers . The scholars in this group can barely be even called scholars . The clout chasers are the bottom feeders of every movement .They need not be pondered on but we felt that we needed to include them to be as concise as possible .So, we decided to include one .To them we say, “hope she reads this ,bro”.

The live session from Bangladesh Student Union has also been an indispensable source of lolz and insight . Anyone interested should take a look.

This video also talks about the Rampal issue which is something we will cover in the future . Here’s the link for the live- https://www.facebook.com/bsu.du1952/videos/297262751393385/

Now we could not leave out the various engineers who studied at the University of Google and published their findings by firing up Ms paint.

Now, we are almost at the end of of our paper . We want to end things on a lighter note . We have found a section of the scholars that seem to have a knack for generating humor. We found these people funnier than Pickle Rick.We want to want to highlight them.